Big Pine Lakes Mine?

[thecuban1040]

Anybody know what they were mining at Big Pine Lake #2?

I have dug around to try to find history about that operation and came up empty.

[maverick]

https://thediggings.com/places/ca0272407843/map

[thecuban1040]

Thanks for the link, that's a really cool resource.

The mine I am looking for must be so old that it's no longer a "claim", and isn't listed.

I have a $2 bet with a buddy that it's a silver mine. He bet on tungsten. So the stakes are high

[Jim]

I was up there in September, camping just below the Second Lake dam, and spent a lot of time afterwards trying unravel the history. Not a mine. Just a quarry and what was going to be a really big dam site for Los Angeles Dept. of Public Works to support hydroelectric development. I've written up what I saw and what my on-line research came up with on my website: https://jtringl.smugmug.com/Browser/202 ... -and-Ruins. Go take a look and see if you believe it.

Here's the summary I published on that linked web page (scroll down a ways past my trip photos of the area):

All the man-made features near camp link to two rounds of dam building on Second Lake, one for irrigation, the other for hydroelectric power. The first dated from the late 1890’s or early 1900’s. The second, from 1921, represented the beginning of a hydroelectric project by the Los Angeles Dept. of Public Works. (The LA Aqueduct had gone in just a few years before.) After one year, work on the dam was halted far short of completion. A powerplant was built far downstream on Big Pine Creek four years later as a separate activity. The complex group of small dams -– the ones I labeled the West, Middle, and East Dams -- were part of the first round, although they were strengthened in the second. The East Creek is the spillway. The West Creek is the original Big Pine Creek channel. What I labeled the Big Embankment is the 1921 beginning of a planned 40-50' high dam, 390 feet long. If completed, it would have extended across (and buried) the entire area of the West, Middle, and East Dams, ending on the bluff where the mystery machinery was. That machinery was probably going to be part of the new dam control structure. My camp, with all those sandy tent sites, was on the site of the 1921 workers' camp. What I though was a mine may have been the quarry for the rock used to make the dam. I can only guess at the purpose and origins of the stone building below the dam.

Following that is a discussion of the sources that got me to those conclusions (with links), plus a few images from that research: some 1913 field notes showing the dams as they stood then and a 1921 picture of the workers camp.


Jim Ringland
Oakland CA
Long time lurker on HST, finally tempted to de-lurk

[mort]

Hi Jim,
I've been pondering the excellent write-up of what you found.
Next time I'm up there I'll try to imagine what lake 2 would be like with a 50 ft high dam!.
I wonder who uses that stone shack on the boulder with no door. The flue looks new, so somebody wants to use the stove. My guess is that it is the downhill end of a tunnel.
Thank you for posting and all your research. I'm very impressed.
-mort

(photo by Jim Ringland)

[thecuban1040]

Jim, your article is incredibly cool. So awesome to get a glimpse into the past. Thanks for all of the effort that you put into this.

I'm always blown away to hear about the sort of labor people were capable of 100 years ago. That's a lotta rock to move around by hand...

[Jim]

I'm glad you all enjoyed my page. One note to mort: that flue is not totally new. Using Google Lens, I've found two other sites that show the building. This one, from 2015, shows the building in just about the same condition, with what looks like the same shiny flue pipe. In the comments section at the end, that poster says he thought it was new then. But given how little has changed in 9 years, my guess is that it could well go back considerably farther. More to add to this interesting mystery...

Jim